that as a man accepts his party's nomination for president oftheunitedstates, tobe our commander in chief, he didn't even mention the war we were fighting, which will be our longest war, not to mention he didn't mention anything about veterans and our sacred obligation to them. i find it stunning. i find his comments in the aftermath of that stunning. his response to bill crystal's criticism and fox news' criticism of him, it's remarkable. what i have been talking about, martin, is what an exceptional president and commander in chief president obama has been. he's done exactly what he said he was going to do by ending a war in iraq, setting us on a path to hand over authority in afghanistan by 2014. making sure that we refocused our efforts on going after al qaeda in afghanistan and pakistan, decimating al qaeda. you saw the news yesterday what happened in yemen. proving the mission to eliminate osama bin laden from the face of this earth, and also and importantly, this is something i'm not sure romney and ryan understand, honoring the commitment we have to our veterans when they return.

promise he'd made to the american people. >> madam speaker, the president oftheunitedstates. >>obama decided this was an issue he needed to take on early in his presidency or forfeit it entirely. >> chris, picking up your co commentary there, how much of this fight is still about the president's decision on health care reform? >> well, i think the republicans think it's a bad thing. even though it's something that american presidents have really argued for since the days of teddy roosevelt. certainly all progressives, all of them including harry truman and kennedy and johnsens and going back to both roosevelts. it's something that's always been on the progressive agenda and never been realized. of course conservatives are opposed to it. they were opposed to social security and medicare and medicaid and unemployment composition and child labor laws and minimum wage. i was just reading this book about the young winston churchill in the early part of last century. the politics haven't changed. they haven't changed. it's the same old arguments. predictable opposition to social progress.